Females Bare All In A "Nothing To Hide" Toronto News Website

TORONTO (dpa) - Topless news anchors? Fetching female newsreaders who strip while reading out the day's news? Sounds like porn - but it's all in day's work for Canadian news presenter Victoria Sinclair.

Sinclair works for the Toronto-based NakedNews.com, an Internet newscaster that merges news and entertainment.

Sinclair starts a slow strip as the newscast begins. By the time she reads the weather report, she is completely naked.

Naked News has been on the air in Toronto for a year and is also available online around the world.

Despite the distraction of disrobing during the newscast, Sinclair and her three equally attractive female colleagues present the news in all seriousness, much like their more conventional - and fully clothed - counterparts at mainstream broadcasters.

"Pope John Paul II addressed tens of thousands of people in Rome," reads Diane Foster as she unbuttons her blouse.

"Palestinians and Israelis are again..." she continues, as she removes her bra amidst a background photo of Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat.

Moving on to forest fires in California, the optician-turned- stripper newsreader removes her red panties.

Sinclair and Foster and their colleagues Carmen Russo and Holly Weston have a huge following. Each is responsible for a different subject: Sinclair and Foster read general news, Russo presents business news and Weston does entertainment and sports news.

"We do not need to advertise," Sinclair asserts. A few e-mails were enough to spread the word.

NakedNews.com, which calls itself "The program with nothing to hide", says it has about four million viewers a month. A conventional TV news show with such a comparatively small audience would have to think about giving up.

But the "amazingly popular news program" from Canada is only available online so far. And four million "hits" a month are not a bad rating for a website.

Sinclair says that initially, only men logged on to NakedNews.com. But the audience now comprises both men and women. News has rarely been as entertaining as the broadcasts produced by what one pundit termed "Internet-CNN for nudists".

Naked News producer Elliott Shulman has big plans for his brainchild. He is looking for investors who can help turn "Naked Broadcasting Inc." into a proper cable TV station.

Shulmann said he considers Naked News a symbol of freedom of speech and a product of the electronic age.